Paul Cicero
Paul "Paulie" Cicero is a fictional character and the secondary antagonist of the 1990 epic Martin Scorsese directed crime film Goodfellas. Based upon the former Lucchese crime family underboss and caporegime Paul Vario, who was a mentor to Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, who worked for him as part of The Vario Crew, the part of Paulie was played in the film by actor Paul Sorvino. About Paulie Henry Hill (who, in the film, was portrayed by Ray Liotta) learns from a young age that Paul "Paulie" Cicero is "the boss over everybody" in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. At around age thirteen, he picked Paulie to be his surrogate father. In the film Paulie was portrayed as outwardly cool, calm, and collected. Unlike Henry's real dad, Paulie is not easily riled up. He hated conferences and commotion, and he even refused to talk on the phone, out of fears that the cops or the FBI could've had his phone wire tapped. Also depicted as being "super reliable", hundreds of underlings depended on Paulie for their livelihood, and, as long as they don't break the mafia's code of conduct, he had their backs. Paulie basically adopts Henry when, at the age of 13, he started working at Paulie's cabstand and began clashing with his own father, Henry Sr., who not only hotly disapproved of his son working for the neighborhood mobster, as he knew what Paulie did on the side illegaly while owning the cabstand, (cargo goods hijacking, loan sharking, extortion, fencing, illegal gambling racketeering, to name a few things) but also learned of his son not having been to school in over a month, as he confronted him when he received his report card filled with failing grades in the mail, and slapped and beat him with his belt afterwards for it. Henry, along with Tommy DeVito (played by Joe Pesci), who, at the time, started selling cigarettes out of stolen cargo trucks hijacked by Vario's crew, met through their mutual association with Paulie in the late 1950s, and contined their association with Paulie until Tommy's death in 1979 at the hands of members of the Gambino crime family as reprisal for his murder of "Billy Batts" Devino (in the film, played by Frank Vincent) several years eariler. Paulie and Henry's father-son bond is also why Henry takes it so hard when Paulie hands him a wad of cash and turns his back on him. "Thirty-two hundred bucks," Henry grouses. "That's what he gave me. Thirty-two hundred bucks for a lifetime. It wasn't even enough to pay for the coffin!" Henry feels that Paulie owes him more, not just for his life of crime, but because he's his de facto son. Misconceptions about Paulie / Contrasts with Paul Vario Vario, whom the "Paulie" in Goodfellas was based on, according to those who knew and worked for him, was far from the relatively coolheaded powerbroker Paul Sorvino portrayed in the film. A federal prosecutor once called Vario, who served jail time for rape and had a notoriously unhinged temper, "one of the most violent and dangerous career criminals in the city of New York.” References External links *Paul Cicero character analysis at Shoomp.com